psychological explanation:psychodynamic explanation Flashcards
(6 cards)
The inadequate superego
You may recall that the Superego, alongside the Id and the Ego, make up the tripartite structure of
personality. The Superego is formed at the end of the phallic stage of development when children resolve the Oedipus complex (sometimes referred to as the Electra complex in girls - both complexes are described on page 18). The Superego works on the morality principle and exerts its influence by punishing the Ego through guilt for wrongdoing, whilst rewarding it with pride for good moral behaviour.
Ronald Blackburn (1993) argued that if the Superego is somehow deficient or inadequate then offending behaviour is inevitable because the Id is given ‘free rein’ and not properly controlled.
Three types of inadequate Superego have been proposed:
1. The weak Superego - if the same-gender parent is absent during the phallic stage, a child cannot internalise a fully-formed Superego as there is no opportunity for identification. This would make immoral or offending behaviour more likely.
- The deviant Superego - if the Superego that a child internalises has immoral or deviant values this would lead to offending behaviour. For instance, a boy who is raised by a criminal father is
not likely to associate guilt with wrongdoing. - The over-harsh Superego - a healthy Superego is based on identification with a parent who has firm rules but forgives transgressions. In contrast an excessively punitive or overly harsh parenting style leads to a child with an over-harsh Superego who is crippled by guilt and anxiety. This may (unconsciously) drive the individual to perform criminal acts in order to satisfy the Superego’s overwhelming need for punishment.
The role of emotion
The effect of an inadequate Superego (weak, deviant or over-harsh) is to allow primitive, emotional demands to become uppermost in guiding moral behaviour.
This is a key feature of the psychodynamic approach and marks it out as different from the other explanations of crime that we have looked at. The psychodynamic approach deals with the emotional life of the individual - for example, it acknowledges the role of anxiety and guilt in the development of offending behaviour. This also means that lack of guilt is relevant to understanding offending behaviour, as in the case of maternal deprivation theory which we are about to consider.
Theory of maternal deprivation
In your A level studies you have learned about John Bowlby’s (1944) theory of maternal deprivation. He argued that the ability to form meaningful relationships in adulthood was dependent upon the child forming a warm, continuous relationship with a mother-figure.
Failure to establish such a relationship during the first few years of life means a child is likely to experience a number of damaging and irreversible consequences in later life.
One of these is the development of a particular personality type, known as affectionless psychopathy, characterised by a lack of guilt, empathy and feeling for others. Such maternally deprived individuals are likely to engage in acts of delinquency and cannot develop close relationships with others.
44 juvenile thieves
Bowlby (1944) supported his claims with his own investigation of 44 juvenile thieves. He found, through interviews with the thieves and their families, that 14 of the sample he studied showed personality and behavioural characteristics that could be classified as affectionless psychopathy. Of this 14, 12 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers during infancy (in particular, the first two years of their lives). In a non-offender group, only two had experienced similar early separation. Bowlby concluded that the effects of maternal deprivation had caused affectionless and delinquent behaviour among the juvenile thieves.
strength-research support
One strength of the psychodynamic approach is research support for the link between offending and the Superego.
Miroslav Goreta (1991) conducted a Freudian-style analysis of ten offenders referred for psychiatric treatment.
In all those assessed, disturbances in Superego formation were
diagnosed. Each offender experienced unconscious feelings of guilt and the need for self-punishment. Goreta explained this as a consequence of an over-harsh Superego, the need for punishment manifesting itself as a desire to commit acts of wrongdoing and offend.
This evidence seems to support the role of psychic conflicts and an over-harsh
Superego as a basis for offending.
Counterpoint Generally however, the central principles of the inadequate Superego theory are not supported. If this theory were correct we would expect harsh, punitive parents to raise children who constantly experience feelings of guilt and anxiety. Evidence suggests, however, that the opposite is true. Parents who rely on harsher forms of discipline tend to raise children who are rebellious and rarely express feelings of guilt or self-criticism (Kochanska et al. 2001).
This calls into question the relationship between a strong, punitive internal parent and excessive feelings of guilt within the child.
limitation-gender bias
One limitation of Freudian theory is that it is gender-biased
An implicit assumption within Freud’s theory is that girls develop a weaker Superego than boys because identification with the same-gender parent is not as strong. This is because girls do not experience the intense emotion associated with castration anxiety, and therefore are under less pressure to identify with their mothers (than boys are with their fathers). Therefore, according to Freud, their Superego (and consequently their sense of morality) is less fully realised. The implication of this is that women should be more prone to offending behaviour than men. Rates of imprisonment show that the opposite is more likely to be true (in the UK about 20 times more men are in prison than women). In a study where children were required to resist temptation, Martin Hoffman (1975) found hardly any evidence of gender differences, and when there was, little girls tended to be more moral than little boys.
This suggests there is alpha bias at the heart of Freud’s theory and means it may not be appropriate as an explanation of offending behaviour.
Limitation-other factors
Another limitation of the psychodynamic approach to offending is that Bowlby’s theory is only based on an association between maternal deprivation and offending.
Hilda Lewis (1954) analysed data drawn from interviews with 500 young people and found that maternal deprivation was a poor predictor of future offending and the ability to form close relationships in adolescence. Even if there is a link between children who have experienced frequent or prolonged separation from their mothers and offending in later life, this is not necessarily a causal relationship. There are countless other reasons for this apparent link, for example the maternal deprivation may be due to growing up in poverty - and this might then explain later offending.
This suggests that maternal deprivation may be one of the reasons for later offending behaviour, but not the only reason.
